Maart 2002

I'm not sure what the folks at Yahoo are up to, but it doesn't please me. Earlier this month I received the news that they'll stop their POP and SMTP features, and now I'm reading on Slashdot about how "they have kindly reset everyone's marketing preferences". Not nice at all. Sigh. Well, since it's easter, you might aswell check out these easter eggs. And here is some info about Summertime, which has started last night.

In other news, Britain mourns Queen Mother, who died in her sleep on Saturday afternoon at the age of 101.

The BBC has a new program called "Arthur, King of the Britons". I'm addicted to the Arthurian legend, so I couldn't really miss this, now could I?

The new SuSE Linux, version 8.0, will be available from mid-april 2002! The scrreenshots look very good. I'm still browsing around and I've installed Mandrake 8.2 last night, but I'd like to try out the new Suse also. Shame it's not completely open source, which means it's not freely downloadable.

I'm not in much of a working mood today, people. The sun is out and half the world has taken the day off. It's Good Friday (the Friday on which the Church keeps the anniversary of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ), you see. Well, at least I have monday off, because of Easter. I'm an atheist, but I can appreciate a day of from work as much as the next person.

Oh, I just wanted to mention this page with some nice Paint Shop Pro and CSS tutorials. Enjoy.

I've called the Informatie Beheer Groep earlier today, because I'm still using my student public transport card, which I should have handed in the moment I graduated. Apparently there will be a fine in it for the month of March. Probably about €150. Damn. So this means I have to hand in my card before April 1st, or else I'll be fined for April also. Sigh. This will be very hard to give up. I'll have to pay for my public transport once more. Not nice. I'd better hurry up with that driver's license...

Here are the lyrics for Lost Control, by Anathema. It's what I woke up to, since it was still in my CD player. And simply because I love this song. I just found out on the website that guitarist Daniel Cavanagh is leaving the band. Shame.

Happy birthday to my dad, who has turned 50 today! Born exactly half a century ago on March 28th 1952. Check out this Time Capsule for more info on that date (or any other for that matter).

You might have already seen it elsewhere, but I just wanted to mention that there finally is some news on the The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring DVD release, which I found via the Slashdot post "One DVD To Rule Them All". Apparently there will be a "4-hour, R-rated cut of the film debuting in a 4-disc set on November 12th". Very cool. Can't wait!

I'm glad the weather has improved. Somehow the beginning of spring has meant the temperatures have dropped (it was only 0.3° Celcius when I left for work this morning!), but it is alo wonderfully sunny. Ironically enough it might be the best weather we've had all winter.

Some other stuff I wanted to mention » A RIP for actor Dudley Moore, who died yesterday, at the age of 66. In case you're an overprotective parent, the Wherify GPS Personal might be for you. And this article about lawsuits against Dutch companies concerning slavery (in Dutch, sorry). I understand where there coming from, but come on, it's 350 years ago!

Pong: The Movie is cool. So is Pong: The Text-Based Game. Enjoy.

I'm checking out the 13thparallel website. Pretty. And nice to see a clever use of horizontal navigation. Kudos. And this might come in handy for you (it did for me) » Bookmarklets and other useful things for IE's Links bar.

A post on Slashdot is called "Old Sierra Games Breathe Anew". Oh yeah! I used to love playing Kings Quest and Larry and Commander Keen and all the others. Really great. I even played most of them again, when I discovered the concept of AbandonWarez. Remember the days of 5 games of one disc? While I'm on the subject of gaming, I just read that the Sims has sold more copies than Myst. More than 6.3 million copies worldwide. Wow. That's quite a few.

"I am the TIGER! I'm a strong-minded person who knows what's good for you. I don't let anyone get in your way and think twice before believing something." » What animal are YOU?

In case you're interested, here's a link to a paper on TCP/IP Security. My brother is on a security kick, you see. And therefor sending me all kinds of links on this subject. And I'm blogging them for future reference. Now you know. Oh, and here is some more geekhumor » How To Write Unmaintainable Code.

I can't believe Lord Of The Rings didn't win for best picture at the Academy Awards! You might want to check out the Little Golden Guy website for a lot of statistics.

Shame on me! I haven't blogged anything all weekend. But I have a valid excuse. Cool or what? I've also borrowed Star Trek The Next Generation - The Complete First Season on DVD. I never was a big fan, but seeing it all in context and the correct order does help. I'm not an addict (yet?), but I am going to watch all 7 DVD's (with 3 episodes each). And I'm still working my way through the Sopranos on DVD. One DVD a week. I'd arrived at the second series this weekend.

If you're using Dreamweaver, you should read the latest A List Apart, etitled "Modifying Dreamweaver to Produce Valid XHTML".

Hmm. Another interesting post on Slashdot. It's called "Linux IDE For Web Developers?". I was wondering about getting the ColdFusion environment to function properly on Linux myself.

It's Spring Clean the Internet Week » "Throw out the old junk, get rid of those files you haven't updated, store them on a disk instead of on the Web!"

I'm on Slashdot! Oh my goodness. I had totally forgotten about this post. Wow!!

We're not doing so well, naturewise, now are we? First the whole ice in the sea event, and now I read on Slashdot about an "asteroid hiding in an astronomical blindspot which nearly blindsided Earth". On a more positive hand, I've tidied up all the wires under my desk. Don't you just love tiewraps? And they even make a cool sound as an added bonus. Sigh. Life can be good.

BOFH » LOL!</a bit of geek humor>

I just love Julen.net. And I'm even more pleased she's added a subsection, called The Ancient World Web. Nice work. I'll have to come back here.

Eugene Mirman is currently performing his greatest hits. Hilarious. Check it out!

I just read the latest on Slashdot, about the Antarctic Larsen Ice Shelf which has disintegrated. Better prepare for arctic winters, because it won't be long now before the oceanic conveyor belt will stop.

"If we could somehow code our weblogs with this structure, Google and other services would be able to see the content as it really is: a loose collection of independent posts." Steven offers a solution, which he calls BlogML: The Weblog Markup Language. Nice idea, but I do think this is exactly what one could use XML for. Right? (via Frownland)

Web Site Compression » learn how to compress your HTML output. Hmm. Interesting. I'll have to do some experimenting with this one. On an altogether different note, Driving Over Jakob Nielsen is truly hilarious! I'm catching up on Slashdot, after the weekend. One of the more interesting posts was all about passwords. It's not very surprising, but apparently Crappy Passwords Are Very Common. Clicking further, I found this cool Password generator. Maybe it'll help. And whether it does or doesn't, you might want to check the quiz over at Asian Bastard.

I just heard that the fifth part of Jean Auel's Earth Children series will be released here on May 1st. Hurah! We've been waiting far too long for this one. It'll be entitled The Shelters of Stone (or Een Vuurplaats in Steen, in case you're Dutch). I can't wait. This series is one of my all time favourites.

Speaking of books, I'm currently re-reading Firebrand, by Marion Zimmer Bradley (the Dutch translation is called Stormen over Troje). I recently purchased it second hand. And it's even better the second time I'm reading it. Don't you love books that just get better? By the way, if you want to, you can read more about the Trojan War here.

And then yet another book related remark. My brother gave me Blackadder: The Whole Damn Dynasty 1485-1917, for my birthday. This book contains all the full scripts of tv-show Blackadder. A truly great present.

I just found out that Fear Factory have split up. I'm not sure if it has been confirmed. There is nothing to be found on the website, but many sources confirm the news. Truly sad.

Which Breakfast Clubber Are You?

Which Empire Records Character Are You?

I so love The Mirror Project.

Friday already. Strange. I'm no longer a student. Sigh. The graduation was nice. A kind speech and a few familiar faces. To the schoolbuilding for the last time. We took the Mavica, so I had a little fieldtrip through the building, after the ceremony. I might post some of the images next week. Nostalgia. After that we went out to dinner. Just the four of us. My parents, my brother and I. We had a good time. But I feel like a lot of stuff is coming to an end. Strange.

On a somewhat different note, I found a collection of Philisophy Links.

Happy Birthday to me! Here's a link to the Pisces horoscope forecast for the year ahead. And here's some information on my birthyear. I'm going to Utrecht in a few hours, to go to my graduation. The ceremonial events are to commence at 14:00h. It'll be strange, to no longer be a student. I've been one for so long. Anyhow, Quoteland has got some great quotes on education. How about the following. "An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don't.", by Anatole France.

My new blog calendar is up. What do you think? It's still a bit slow, but I know how I can speed things up a lot. But I'll get to that next week. Also, I've added a tribute to Vincent van Gogh page. That's it for now. Have a good weekend!

I've been having some trouble with my elbow, so I used the ergometer to check my desk and chair settings. But everything appears to be at the right height. Strange. Anyhow, I just read on Slashdot that Mozilla 0.9.9 has been released. I'd better download it later on. I wonder when version 1.0 will be released.

The Linux Terminal - a Beginners' Bash » "In this document we will go step by step through many common tasks. Hopefully by the end you will feel quite familiar with the terminal."

I'm browsing Der Naturen Bloeme, about the work of Jacob van Maerlant. There's a dictionary of strange words in Dutch on the same site, called Woordenweb. And then there's Cinema.nl, a new moviesite. I like that they've done it mostly with CSS. Are you feeling overwhelmed by Microsoft? Here's a handy 12-step program to cure your condition. How to Run a Microsoft-Free Shop.

To get you up to date » There is a hostage situation in Amsterdam. Something to do with widescreen televisions. At the same time the WTC attack is exactly 6 months ago today. Everything was fine when I went to the dentist this morning. I'm playing Zoo Tycoon now. And here is a link for Bob Ross Puzzles.

The new version of BlogBuddy (0.5) is out. Download it now. It rocks!

CSS in the real world is a lecture on CSS by Jeffrey Zeldman. Take a look. Also, I found a link to Table-Less Design Examples at Dotfile. Which to my surprise contained a link to me. Unfortunately the adress used is no longer valid, so I've just send out a mail with the new adress.

17-jarige jongen uit Hazerswoude-dorp overleden aan hersenvliesontsteking. Dat brengt het wel heel erg dichtbij, ik woon namelijk zo ongeveer binnen geluidsafstand. Voor meer informatie over de ziekte, zie Google.

Our destiny changes with our thought; we shall become what we wish to become, do what we wish to do, when our habitual thought corresponds with our desire. » Orison S. Marden

That's right. Yesterday was International Women's Day. Oh well. This is much better. It made me laugh.

Let's keep things light, shall we? The sun is out and I'm getting my diploma next week. Oh, and I almost forgot, the ceremony is on March the 14th, which is also my 23rd birthday!

Anyhow, it's been a good week for movies for me. Let me get into way too much detail. (Feel free to skip the rest of this post, as it is not quite interesting.) It all started with a rental of Almost Famous and The Kid. Unfortunately The Kid was a bit too Disney for my liking and the copy of Almost Famous had died shortly before the rental took place, which is the reason for me not having seen it. We did however get a different movie for free and we decided on Planet of the Apes. After that I borrowed Battlefield Earth and Swordfish on DVD from a colleague. The first was an okay movie and the latter I have yet to see.

Another excursion to the videostore resulted in a huge save, because we decided not to go for the usual one expensive one-day rental of €4.95, but for 4 week-rentals at the total of €8. Resulting in the save mentioned before. The bounty contains American Psycho, which I had wanted to see for ages now, The Debt Collector, Shadow of the Vampire and Double Whammy. I haven't seen the first three, so I'll have to let you know what they were like on a later date. Double Whammy was entertaining. Shame Steve Buscemi played such a small part.

And then I almost forgot about the ones I've watched on television » Reality Bites, Single White Female and The Object of My Affection. I can't believe there are people out there who claim not to like movies. Sigh.

I wanted to blog this yesterday, but unfortunately Blogger was down for maintenance. That's okay. It happens. I'll just mail it home and post it tomorrow (which is today- get it?). Gosh, I've been quite busy. Yesterday morning -which is thursday, as I'm typing this on friday and posting it today, on saturday- I wanted to update my virusdefinitions for Norton Anti-Virus. But my Windows started to complain about a lack off space on my harddisk. What to do. I had already removed all non-essentials in the past weeks. My disk was just to small.

To my luck there was a bigger disk (10GB versus my 3,5GB) floating about the place. I then had the bright idea of replacing the disks and taking the chance of reinstalling windows. A fresh start and all that. But as I'm working on a Compaq machine, which can be tricky, as you may or may not know, it all took a bit longer than I expected. To try and make a long story a bit shorter, I finished installing Windows XP somewhere late afternoon on thursday.

Ofcourse, I couldn't stop there and with all the big apps and the even more smaller ones and not to forget the tones of tweaking of settings, I have only finished about an hour ago (on friday). But it's all running very smooth, I must say. Much better. I never did get those Norton updates though. Maybe I can give that a whirl on monday.

And then it's time for a few links » use Deja Vu to browse the web as we remember it. Learn more about print at the MOMO. Or read about Contingency Design (what users see when things go wrong).

And then the real info for today. I just received the official invitation for my diploma ceremony. Quite strange. Everything I've been working for the past 20 years or so have finally come to an end. My graduation is here. But I feel like I'm stepping into a strange void. Not like I've accomplished greatness. It's the weirdest of feelings. Hmm. I think I'll have to do some thinking on where my life is heading, because for the first time, I don't have a new goal. Well, apart from a few shortterm goals, that is. Like getting my driver's license. And getting well. Because I haven't been. Not for a long time. But I won't go into details here. That's just to personal and I'm not ready to share this with the world. Wow, I didn't plan to get so gloomy on a saturday afternoon. I'm sorry. Just ignore me.

I've written up a small tutorial about my blogging method. Just some stuff I wanted to share. Please don't hesitate to mail me your comments and/or suggestions.

If you want you can try out L&H RealSpeak - Demo. You can make some cool soundfiles with this one. In case you're interested, I'm currently doing some work on the Channel4cars website and also browsing the web looking for a cheap online DVD store. I want to order some new discs, but haven't found one that isn't that expensive and has everything I want. Like the complete first season of Father Ted. The one that comes closest is Blackstar. If you have a tip, please let me know.

Landlord videotaped bathrooms » "Police were tipped off by a tenant who found a suspicious hole in the ceiling." More disturbing news can be found at azcentral.

I was just checking progress for the next release of BlogBuddy. Apparently the next one will be out on March 11th. Hurah! I love BlogBuddy. In the feature request archive I noticed one I had posted ages ago, entitled "Winamp is now playing". It's status is closed, so I'm guessing it'll be a new feature. Wow. Can't wait for next week.

This is one tough wednesday to get through. I can't seem to focus today. My mind wanders and so does the mouse. I'm all over the place. Like the Christopher Walken homepage and the Annotated XML Specification. Also, it's been ages since I've taken a web-test, but I got seduced by the 'What Muppet Are You?' Quiz. "You are Kermit! » Though you're technically the star, you're pretty mellow and don't mind letting others share the spotlight. You are also something of a dreamer." So now you know. Oh, go on. Just one more. How about the Who's Your Fellowship Fella? » Apparently it's Aragorn. "Tall, dark, and RUGGEDLY handsome!" Okay. Enough foolishness for one post. Now it's time to get some work done.

Inderdaad ja, vandaag zijn de Gemeenteraads-verkiezingen. Ik heb mijn moeder maar gemachtigd, want ik zie echt geen kans om naar de stembus te hollen.

"Ever wanted to instantly see all the forms, images or styles on a page? Ever wanted to see how the tables are laid out on your favorite site? Well now you can, and you can also see them on any page on the net!" Download WebTool now.

I found the official RSS 0.91 Specifications.

The Encyclopedia Mythica (Pantheon.org) is back online!

To continue where I left off yesterday » "There are two widely-used methods for programming languages to read XML documents: event-based APIs and Document Object Model (DOM) APIs." Read on at WebmasterBase on 'PHP and XML: Parsing RSS 1.0'.

The Threat of a Linux Generation » "Whereas American corporations moved from mainframes to networks of personal-computer servers back in the 1980s, Europe lagged by a decade. By then, Linux had been developed into a robust competitor to Windows. European firms embraced Linux, and the Internet boom provided further impetus."

I want to use XML for my Blog, so I've been reading up on the issue for a few days now. Here are some things you might be interested in.WebReview.com: RSS Delivers the XML Promise » "RSS (Rich Site Summary) is an application of XML (eXtensible Markup Language). In essence, RSS is a file format that uses XML. It can be created easily by hand or by any web content management system. The RSS core file defines a 'channel'. Surrounding this core file are a number of tools, services, and protocols that, while not strictly RSS, extend the power of this simple format to the point where it can compete with many high-priced commercial content-sharing and syndication systems."

I think I'll use BlogFeed for my blog. This contains a number of PHP files which convert your blog to RSS. And as a bonus, also communicates the updates to Weblogs.com. Oh, and here's a link to the Google directory on RSS.

Have you noticed my RSS and XML links on the bottom of this page? Cool huh? Whilst I'm on the subject I'd also like to include links to the following sites » Creating RSS files for your Web site - exploring XML - webreference.com, Generating an Easy RSS News Channel, an excellent RSS FAQ and RSS Info.

Some humor before lunch » NormalBobSmith.com, Hovercraft racing and UNIX for the PC.

Some more metal news this evening. This time from Zwaremetalen.com. It claims the next Opeth album will be a double CD. On the Opeth website » "The plan is to release separate Cd's at the same time, one heavy, one mellow. The heavy Cd will be typical Opeth with all it's ingredients including mellow parts, while the 'mellow' Cd will have more laid back material. The band is currently hard at work writing." This pleases me greatly, since Opeth is one of my favourite bands. Can't wait for the release.

And that's it for now, since I'm going to vege out in front of the tv.

Just browsing Metalfan, which is kinda like Slashdot, only for metalfans and in Dutch. Nice. I'm looking for more info on Ozzfest. I already knew about Slayer, Ozzy Osbourne, Tool and Within Temptation. I just found out about Zack Wylde's Black Label Society and System of a Down. I also read some rumors about Monster Magnet, which got me really happy, but they're not confirmed anywhere, so appear to be not very correct. Unfortunatly.

Speaking of evolution » there's an article on Kungfoo.com about the "teaching of creationism alongside evolution in public schools in Ohio. The state legislature is being asked to vote on a bill that proposes that competing theories on the origin of life be given equal presentation, without religious, naturalistic, or philosophic bias." As if that's possible.

Bieslog is back...

I got the tickets! Got up at 9:00 this morning and went to Alphen. Stood in line for about half an hour, waiting for the postoffice to open up. But I succeeded. Hurah! At the last count, I think we're going with 10 people. Should be fun.

I also received notification from school. The official paper that states I've succeeded. So now I can get started with signing out. Bureaucracy o'plenty. And to top things of, I've also received news from the ANWB, which stated I can start my driving lessons in August. Ten dates, at the end of which I'll have my much desired paper.

It was a good week for mail (the real stuff, that is), because I also received my order from Large. I ordered 2 Kyuss CD's (Welcome to Sky Valley and Blues for the Red Sun), a 4-cd Metal Blade package, a hardcover version of Laurie Cabot's Het Groot Heksenboek (which bundles Dutch translations of her books Power of the Witch and The Witch in Every Woman) and 2 posters (Tool and Opeth). To add a personal touch to this material listing, I'd like to mention that I cut open half my finger as I was placing the posters in a frame. The glass front broke as I was holding it. Luckily there's no glass in my hand, and I'll be fine. Fascinating stuff, right?

And then there are some links I found in various places » Early Photography, contains photo's from Dutch public collections from 1839-1860. For even more images go to Duizend woorden.

This brings tears to my eyes. One-pla.net » "[...] Web designers (the serious ones again) will be spending more and more time thinking about design and less and less time trying to figure out how to cope with old broken browsers. In the new regime, it will be possible--indeed, it will be our responsibility--to keep content separate from style. Then, our pages will become truly maintainable, truly searchable, truly accessible.

The foundations of our revolution are two: XHTML and CSS. We'll use the XHTML for content, the CSS for styles. This is truly a revolution comrade, and now is the time to join.

Write to the standards or be written off by the standards!"

Yet another reason for using Google » "Google alone among the top search services has vowed not to collect fees from companies to guarantee them inclusion in searches. By contrast, AltaVista, Inktomi and Lycos all charge fees in return for inclusion and sometimes favorable treatment in their Web indexes."

Two tech-related links » Power Guides and What Makes a Good Web Design?. And one for fun » The Alphabet Synthesis Machine, "which allows one to create and evolve the possible writing systems of one's own imaginary civilizations".